On the Life of Archimandrite Anthony Grabbe (+2005)

Alexey Rodionov | September 13, 2025

Source: excerpt from the article "Две судьбы, два пути: архимандрит Антоний (Граббе) и епископ Александр (Милеант)," posted at  https://rocor-observer.livejournal.com/297330.html

 

[Archimandrite Anthony (in the world Alexei Grabbe), son of Count Yuri Pavlovich Grabbe (the future Bishop Gregory)] was born on June 22, 1926, in Belgrade. From childhood, he resolved to serve the Church, especially after receiving from Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) a photograph bearing the inscription, “To the future bishop.” It is unknown whether this was written in earnest or was an expression of Metropolitan Anthony’s peculiar sense of humor, but in any case, the life of Alexei Grabbe was forever marred by the dream of becoming a bishop.

At the age of 16, he was ordained a reader. In 1945, at 19 years old, he entered as a novice the newly established Monastery of St. Job of Pochaev in the outskirts of Munich. Shortly thereafter, he was ordained a deacon. On December 30, 1948, in the church of the dependency of the Monastery of St. Job of Pochaev in Munich, the head of the ROCOR Synod of Bishops, Metropolitan Anastasy (Gribanovsky), tonsured him into the mantia with the name Anthony, in honor of Saint Anthony the Great.

In that same year, 1948, Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville was established. Hierodeacon Anthony was among its first six students. During his studies at the seminary, he was ordained a hieromonk. In 1954, he graduated from the seminary with a Bachelor of Theology degree and became a cleric of the Synodal Cathedral of the Icon of the Mother of God of the Sign in New York, as well as director of the Saint Sergius High School in New York, founded a year earlier, which he led for nearly 30 years. In addition, he served as secretary to Archbishop Vitaly (Maximenko) and was in charge of the monastery chancellery.

In 1962, at the age of 36, he was elevated to the rank of archimandrite. After the election of Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky) as First Hierarch of ROCOR—who was the most recently consecrated bishop of the Church at the time—the influence of Protopresbyter Gregory Grabbe increased noticeably. His son, Archimandrite Anthony, as well as his daughters and their husbands, eventually occupied significant positions in the Chancellery of the Synod of Bishops and played an important role in the internal life of ROCOR. In the words of [Bishop] Mitrophan Znosko-Borovsky, after the election of Metropolitan Philaret as First Hierarch, he effectively became “a captive of the father and son without the Holy Spirit, and of their circle of youth.” Complaints about his son were ignored for a long time in the Synod, as Protopresbyter George Grabbe shielded the abuses of those close to him.

In May 1968, Archimandrite Anthony was appointed head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem. By the late 1960s, the mission consisted of 16 clergymen and monastics. The Russian Church Abroad possessed in the Holy Land the Monastery of the Ascension of the Lord on the Mount of Olives, which housed more than 100 nuns. Another establishment was the Bethany Community of the Resurrection, with 40 nuns. The monastery held ownership of the Garden of Gethsemane and the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, where the relics of the venerable martyrs Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Nun Barbara were kept. The Bethany Community also operated a large girls' school. Additionally, the Russian Church Abroad owned a plot in Hebron with the Oak of Mamre, the skete of Saint Chariton, property in Jericho, Khirbet-Nasara, Beit Zakhariya, the Jenin Garden, the Prophets' Caves, the Alexander Compound in Jerusalem (“Russian Excavations”) with the Church of Saint Alexander Nevsky and the threshold of the Judgment Gate.

Simultaneously with his appointment, Archimandrite Anthony began actively involving himself in the affairs of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, which he subsequently took control of. On September 5/18, 1969, at a meeting of the Bureau of Administrators of the IOPS, he was elected Vice-Chairman of the Bureau. In the early 1970s, he became Chairman of the Jerusalem Council of the Palestine Orthodox Society under ROCOR. In connection with this, the residence of the head of the mission was temporarily relocated to the Alexander Compound in Jerusalem, which belonged to the Palestine Society.

Like other members of the Grabbe clan, he displayed an open antipathy toward the Moscow Patriarchate [understandably and justifiably – trans. note]. Among other things, he actively obstructed visits by official delegations of the Moscow Patriarchate to the monasteries under his jurisdiction. Learning in advance of planned visits, he would declare those dates as “days of mourning” and close the monasteries to pilgrims. In the late 1970s, the Mission published an informational bulletin titled Memorandum, concerning violations of freedom of conscience in the USSR. On December 12, 1983, he participated in a meeting between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and representatives of American minorities. During the conversation, Reagan plainly stated that both he and the U.S. government understood the difference between the terms “Russian” and “Soviet.”

He engaged in vigorous activity to support Russian holy sites in the Holy Land. In 1984, he succeeded in winning a court case against the State of Israel, which had transferred former property of the Russian Empire in the Holy Land (the Gorny Monastery, churches, and parcels of land) to the USSR, securing seven million dollars in compensation for moral damages. However, he made no distinction between the Church’s purse and his own, and, in addition, contrary to the directives of the Synod, he never brought the mission’s documentation into proper order, which ultimately led to scandal. Archimandrite Anthony was also accused of leading an overly worldly lifestyle, inconsistent with the monastic vows he had taken.

In 1985, it became known that Archimandrite Anthony, without the blessing of the ecclesiastical authorities, had sold parcels of land belonging to the Mission to the Israeli state. He justified his actions by claiming that the Mission was not using these lands anyway, and that with the funds from their sale he had restored local monasteries and churches. In September 1985, a Commission of Investigation was formed, consisting of the former Head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, Archbishop Anthony (Sinkevich) [of Los Angeles], Archbishop Laurus (Skurla) [of Syracuse], and Bishop Hilarion (Kapral) [of Manhattan]. The commission uncovered gross violations in the financial documentation, establishing the fact of embezzlement of funds and the illegal sale of Mission land to Arab owners, which caused extreme indignation from the Israeli government. Meanwhile, on November 21, 1985, Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky) died, and the fate of the Grabbe clan was sealed.

At the ROCOR Council of Bishops held on February 3, 1986, Archimandrite Anthony was asked to voluntarily submit a request to be relieved of his duties as head of the Ecclesiastical Mission. The next action of the ROCOR Synod of Bishops, under the leadership of Metropolitan Vitaly (Ustinov), was the decision, made on March 27, 1986, to prohibit the former head of the Mission from serving as a clergyman until the scandal associated with his name was fully resolved. In response to this, Archimandrite Anthony appealed to Patriarch German of Serbia with a request to transfer to the Serbian Orthodox Church. To the inquiry made by the Serbian side regarding this matter, Metropolitan Vitaly (Ustinov) stated that such a transfer by a clergyman under ecclesiastical censure and subject to church trial was absolutely inadmissible. When reviewing Archimandrite Anthony’s request for transfer to the Serbian Church, the ROCOR Synod of Bishops, held on May 29, 1986, issued a categorical refusal. It is also worth noting that it was under Patriarch German that the Serbian Orthodox Church joined the World Council of Churches…

Archimandrite Anthony, after this, definitively broke communion with ROCOR—the Church that had raised him and in which he once held considerable influence—and passed under the jurisdiction of Metropolitan Paisios (Loulourgas) of New York and America, a hierarch of the Chrysostomite Synod of the Church of the G.O.C. of Greece, taking with him the Alexander Compound and the Church dedicated to Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky in Jerusalem. The response of the leadership of the Russian Church Abroad to Archimandrite Anthony’s departure was a decision to depose him from holy orders “for irresponsible misappropriation of church funds, lack of accountability in the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, violation of laws concerning the administration of property belonging to others, and a morally scandalous way of life.” This resolution was adopted on September 4, 1986, at a session of the ROCOR Synod of Bishops. In addition, the Secretary of the Synod, Archbishop Laurus (Shurla) of Manhattan [sic: of Syracuse and Holy Trinity Monastery], issued a written protest to the leadership of the Chrysostomite Synod.

The First Hierarch of the Chrysostomite Synod, Archbishop Chrysostomos II (Kiousis) of Athens and All Greece, hoping for the restoration of Eucharistic communion with ROCOR, stated in a letter dated August 2, 1986, to Metropolitan Paisios (Loulourgas) of New York and America that the reception of Archimandrite Anthony (Grabbe) was inadmissible. The directive of the Archbishop was carried out. After his departure from ROCOR, Archimandrite Anthony retained his position as president of the Orthodox Palestine Society and continued as rector of the church at the Judgment Gate in Jerusalem. Having settled in New York, he remained in complete external isolation until 1996.

In 1995, he submitted a request to join the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, headed by former ROCOR Bishop Valentin (Rusanstov), but did not receive a positive response. Finally, in 1996, the Athanasian Synod of the Church of the G.O.C. of Greece arose, headed by Metropolitan Athanasios (Charalambidis) of Archarnae. Upon transferring there [himself], Metropolitan Paisios (Loulourgas) of America petitioned for the reception of Archimandrite Anthony (Grabbe). The request of Metropolitan Paisios was granted. A few months after Archimandrite Anthony’s reception, the episcopate of the “Athanasian” Synod of the Church of the G.O.C. of Greece made the decision to consecrate him as a bishop. The episcopal consecration of Bishop Anthony (Grabbe) took place on October 13, 1996, in the Cathedral of Saint Irene Chrysovalantou in New York. And thus, in such a caricatured form, his childhood dream of the episcopacy was fulfilled… Though it is doubtful whether he ever actually governed anything for even a single day after his “episcopal consecration.” I know of no more comical example of a bishopric.

After the collapse of the Athanasian Synod, Anthony (Grabbe) attempted to join the episcopate of the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, but was refused [again], and for the next three years he led an independent existence, unburdened by any jurisdictional affiliation. It was only in December 2001 that the seriously ill Bishop Anthony was finally received into the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church as a retired bishop. Broken and sick, he lived in a nursing home in New York and occasionally came to pray at the St. Nicholas parish in Elmwood Park, where the last members of the once-influential Grabbe family worshipped. Anthony suffered from Parkinson’s disease and died a difficult death in his apartment in New York, where he reposed on September 12, 2005, in his 79th year. He was buried at the Russian cemetery of the Novo-Diveevo Monastery. On September 14, 2005, at the Church of St. Nicholas in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, the funeral service was conducted by the First Hierarch of the ROAC, Metropolitan Valentin of Suzdal and Vladimir, together with Igumen Andrei (Maklakov) and Priest Photios Roseboro.